


It's About Power - Hospitalization in SPN

by yourlibrarian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e11 Sam Interrupted, Gen, Hospitalization, Meta, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6788872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A question posted to spn_heavymeta intrigued me: "Is there some deep, dark reason that Dean is the only one we've seen in hospital with Sam hovering worriedly?"  </p><p>I found it interesting to realize that we haven't yet seen Sam hospitalized, whereas it's happened with Dean twice (three times if we count his sick ward scene in Folsom), John once, and Bobby once, and we have had stories take place, in part, in hospital settings such as Something Wicked and Bedtime Stories, both, interestingly enough, which involved children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's About Power - Hospitalization in SPN

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted March 11, 2009 and July 23, 2010

A question posted to spn_heavymeta intrigued me: "Is there some deep, dark reason that Dean is the only one we've seen in hospital with Sam hovering worriedly?" 

I found it interesting to realize that we haven't yet seen Sam hospitalized, whereas it's happened with Dean twice (three times if we count his sick ward scene in Folsom), John once, and Bobby once, and we have had stories take place, in part, in hospital settings such as Something Wicked and Bedtime Stories, both, interestingly enough, which involved children. There was also the psychiatric hospital in Asylum, and scenes in similar (unhaunted) institutions in HotH, I Know What You Did, ASS, plus the hospital interview scene in Fresh Blood. The only possible exception I could think of was the medical clinic setting of Croatoan, where Sam is attacked and is given some medical treatment. 

So even though realistically speaking Sam and Dean should both be ending up in a hospital on a regular basis, why is it Dean that's always lying there near death? I'd speculate that there's two reasons. The first is simply that it's a dramatic reversal of the frequently seen "Sam in peril" storylines. Especially in S1, Sam was frequently under attack and having to be rescued by Dean (the beginnings of the often cited "Sam gets choked" scene). In S2 Dean's whole mission is, even more explicitly, to keep Sam safe. So we basically see a serious threat to Dean in each of these seasons even though we see Sam in peril routinely in many episodes. In S2 though, we do see Sam working things out on his own more often, such as in Usual Suspects, or when he outfights and outwits Gordon in Hunted. Technically he rescues Dean there, but Dean first rescued Sam, and it's really Sam who's under threat in that episode. And, of course, Sam dies at season's end, with Dean effecting a "rescue" there.

In S3 the object is to turn things around and have Sam save Dean by season's end. And even though he fails at that, he does do this far more often, as we see it in Sin City, Fresh Blood, Dream, Mystery Spot, and Long Distance Call. In other cases we see Sam and Dean effect a joint solution (Sam comes up with the solution in Red Sky, Dean comes up with it in JiB, but both implement it together), or they are both saved by someone else, such as Ruby in Malleus, or Corbin in Ghostfacers. There is less Sam saving going on. In M7, it's Ruby who saves him, and Dean does in BDaBR and TioMS. Notably we have no hospital scenes of Dean in this season, but we do have him die (the third time was the charm, apparently).

S4 is interesting in that there's a big change in who resolves things. We see Dean still in "protect Sam" mode in LR, but Sam's off taking care of business entirely apart from Dean, still on his own mission. In Dear God, it's Bobby who comes up with the solution, although all work together, but Bobby saves the day in YF and SaV, someone else does in Criss Angel and MM, Ruby kind of does in Last Summer, and nobody really saves the day in ItB. Dean saves everyone in FR and ASS. Sam saves Dean in Metamorphosis, the Great Pumpkin, and sort of does in HaH, although it's really a matter of manipulating others into a draw. I've no idea how things are going to pan out in the last seven episodes but it's interesting to see that this season Dean has been in peril more often than Sam. I am fascinated by how this plays into the seasonal arc and the confrontation that Sam and Dean have in Sex and Violence. Perhaps because Dean always seems so physical when it comes to his action on cases, it had slipped below my radar.

For example, if we look at LR, Dean wouldn't have stood a chance against Castiel in their confrontation had Castiel not turned out to be Dean's savior. On the other hand, Sam had no problem confronting his demon quarry (especially with Ruby later revealed as backup). To me, the most interesting episode this season in this respect was MM, where Dean first ditches Sam at the crime scene in order to go out with Jamie, and then sends Sam off to confront what may be a shapeshifter alone so that he can stay with Jamie. Yet it isn't Sam who ends up in trouble but Dean. This was particularly interesting since the episode set itself up at the start as a throwback to the old S1 dynamic. However, I can't imagine things going that way then. Instead Dean wouldn't have let Sam go off alone, and chances are Dean would save the day in the end. In S1 Dean did so 11 times compared to Sam's 5, and the 6 times they did so together, or someone else did (Mary). By S2 Dean did this 6 times compared to Sam's 4, and there were 12 times they did it together, or someone else did, such as Andy or Bobby. By S3, this ratio is reversed.

I think this shifting power balance highlights the second reason for those hospitalization scenes, which is Sam starting to make decisions on his own, without Dean's input. For example, the first time we see him doing this is in Scarecrow, which is also the first time he ends up rescuing Dean in the series. And that is the episode that precedes Faith, where Sam does so again. I think, too, that the hospitalization is partly due to the strength of Dean's character. I always remember a comment my mother made about American television, which was that it was obsessed with hospitals. They feature prominently in most soaps, and we obviously have a lot of medical dramas set in them as well. However, in virtually all shows there are hospital scenes. Her theory on this was that the American culture of emotion was so repressed that only when someone was at death's door was it permissible for strong emotion to be expressed. I think that this was more true in the past than it is today, but it is certainly true that male emotion is particularly repressed in the American as well as many other Anglo-Saxon cultures, and they are expected to be active on their own behalf. 

So even though these boys are plenty emotional and we have waterworks on a regular basis, I thought of what my mom said about this in considering why it's Dean who is bedridden, and dying in those two episodes. It is because it compensates for both Dean's physical vitality as well as his action-orientation. Dean _can't_ do anything in these episodes to help himself, so someone else must. And even then, as we see in Faith, a barely able to stand Dean checks himself out of the hospital and makes his way to the motel because he doesn't want to be there anymore. I felt that that scene had to be somewhat deliberate, because otherwise there was no reason to set it at the motel, which just necessitated another set when they already had Dean's hospital room established. It would have been just as easy to have Sam go pick Dean up at the hospital and take him to Nebraska. My assumption, then, was that it was written that way to return some agency to Dean in an episode where (at least for part of it) his power has been taken away from him. 

Thinking about it, it was also a rare moment of weakness for him that season. Even in Nightmares, where Sam saves him again, Dean wasn't powerless so much as stubborn, and in Devil's Trap, Sam may save him, but Dean still has the power to compel Sam not to kill John. In IMToD, Sam and John both save him – Sam at the car with the Colt, and then in his efforts to contact Dean, and John by making the deal. Despite Dean's activity in that episode, he was really quite powerless, something he wouldn't truly be again until No Rest.

* * *

I realized there had been an important change in S5, namely that Sam has finally been a patient. But I think Sam Interrupted ends up revealing a more audience-directed reason for the pattern.

My conclusion in my earlier post had been that Dean had been the only brother hospitalized because "it compensates for both Dean's physical vitality as well as his action-orientation." In short, someone else has to take the lead because Dean is out of commission, so it generates a different plot pattern than what typically occurred in the earlier seasons. 

I believe though, that this held true only through S3. By S4, I think the primary motivation was character rather than plot related and it had to do, simply, with the audience's desire to see Dean made vulnerable through physical assault. This has become so rampant that it's now being commented on by fans regarding S5, and was a subject of complaint by JA at the Barcelona convention. 

Thus, I think the portrayal in "Sam, Interrupted" is rather interesting in the difference between Sam and Dean as patients. The important arc point of the episode was to reveal Dean and Sam's character flaws (though as I commented [in my meta for that episode](http://yourlibrarian.dreamwidth.org/198749.html), these were hardly revelations). In that regard, we were supposed to be shown that Sam was subject to out-of-control fits of rage, while Dean was supposed to have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and an unhealthy lifestyle (even apart from hunting).

However, it's rather curious that, while we see Sam get angry and assault people, Dean is rendered fearful and confused. In other words, even though his flaw doesn't directly deal with fear (unlike Martin's reason for being at Glenwood Springs), his hallucinations serve to weaken him rather than strengthen him as did Sam's. In fact, even when Sam is restrained and doped up after his attack, this is played off as _humorous_ rather than angsty. We see Dean worry over Sam plenty in the series, but the closest we come to a hospital bedside scene for Sam is when Dean is weeping over his dead body in AHBL2.

I had to laugh to see that in the comments to my earlier post I had speculated we'd see Sam in a "psychiatric hospital? Somehow that seems more apropos, with Sam being the more cerebral character." And indeed, this seems to have been the way they went, with Sam losing that rationality beneath rage. However, he could just as easily have lost that rationality through the sort of fearfulness and confusion we saw in Dean. But this is not the route the writers took. We did, however, see Sam's mind under assault in yet another episode, namely Levee. There he was far more vulnerable than we saw at any time in this episode. But again, there was no bedside comfort from Dean -- what little of it was there came from Mary.

In my last post, ariadnes_string mentioned that Sam's lack of hospitalization could be seen as the parallel to Dean's lack of possession, which I speculated was occurring because it hit each character's strength –- Dean's physicality and Sam's mind. Indeed, Dean continued to evade possession all the way through S5. This, too, was a deliberate choice on the part of the writers, and not just because he was to turn Michael down. Another revelation from the Barcelona con was that Meat Swap originally featured both brothers being body swapped -– twice. However due to time constraints the script was rewritten and we only had Sam swapped. 

One last comment I'm going to make about that post, was something I'd noted about how often someone "saved the day" in each episode. Increasingly in each season, the episode's hero had been neither Sam nor Dean but someone else. Considering how often I complained about how peripheral and passive Sam and Dean were becoming within their own story, I suspect that number was higher than ever in S5.


End file.
